Old version of msys in package causes problems on Windows Vista (x64)

[brfr]

This ticket concerns the WinGRASS and OSGEO4W versions on Windows Vista (x64).

I had problems executing grass commands that are batch files. I tested some variants in the grass command shell and it seems that there is a problem with the /msys/sh.exe. I tried the latest version that is available on the MSYS/MinGW website and that solved my problems. The shipped version with OSGEO4W is "Snapshot-2007.01.19-1", the currently available is "Production Release". My notes are available on the  mailing list.

Issues in the GUIs: No menu opened for the commands. The log showed error messages like

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:/GRASS/etc/wxpython/wxgui.py", line 521, in
OnMenuCmd

menuform.GUI().ParseCommand(cmd, parentframe=self)
  File "C:\GRASS\etc\wxpython\gui_modules\menuform.py", line
1812, in ParseCommand

xml.sax.parseString(getInterfaceDescription(cmd[0]).decode(e
nc).encode("utf-8"),
  File "C:\GRASS\etc\wxpython\gui_modules\menuform.py", line
1751, in getInterfaceDescription

raise IOError, _("Unable to fetch interface description for
command '%s'.") % cmd
IOError
:
Unable to fetch interface description for command
'r.shaded.relief'.

Using the grass shell shows error messages like

"c:/GRASS/msys/bin/sh.exe"-2.04$ c:/GRASS/scripts/r.fillnulls
      0 [main] sh.exe" 3288 sync_with_child: child 2800(0x124) died before 
initialization with status code 0x0
    383 [main] sh.exe" 3288 sync_with_child: *** child state waiting for 
longjmp

"c:/GRASS/msys/bin/sh.exe": fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
"c:/GRASS/msys/bin/sh.exe"-2.04$

This lead me to the conclusion that there were problems with the shell program itself.

[cnielsen]

New version of  msys added to the native WinGrass? package and it seems to fix the error. Perhaps someone could update the msys package in the osgeo4w tree. However, the new version seems to include a broken copy of patch.exe so for now we're keeping the old version of that file only...

[hamish]

Hi,

fyi, adding "grass" as a keyword means that the ticket will automatically get pulled into the list of grass bugs (pkg-grass#Errata) & thus get a bit more attention.

thanks, Hamish